‘The Sopranos’ Rewind: Season 1, Episode 4: ‘Meadowlands’

Welcome to the fourth installment of our summer trip through “The Sopranos” season 1. When I revisited early seasons of “The Wire,” as well as the whole run of “Deadwood,” I did separate versions of each review for newcomers and veterans, but over time realized that the newcomers weren't commenting much, if at all, and that it therefore made sense to simply do one review. Any significant spoilers for episodes beyond the one being reviewed will be contained in a separate section at the end of the review; so long as you avoid that, and the comments, you should be fine.

Thoughts on the fourth episode, “Meadowlands,” coming up just as soon as I take a five minute cool down period…

“Here we go: the War of '99.” -Big Pussy

Later seasons of “The Sopranos” would wax and wane in their interest in the mob stories – particularly in comparison to many fans' obsession with who was going to get whacked next – but this first season has two advantages: 1)David Chase had some version of this arc floating around in his head for years; and 2)Uncle Junior, is, well, Tony's uncle. There would be other attempts at family/Family ties with later nemeses, but never were both halves of the show as firmly linked as they were this year.

That's particularly apparent in an episode like “Meadowlands.” After a couple of outings where the lowercase family material was notably more compelling than what was happening with the wiseguys, this one achieves a strong balance between Tony's two worlds, in part because the lines between the two are so blurred.

Tony's nightmare about members of his crew learning that he's in therapy, coupled with discovering that Silvio's dentist works in the same building as Dr. Melfi, puts his paranoia into overdrive, to the point where he sends crooked, degenerate gambler cop Vin Makazian to look into her. Brendan's murder, followed by Jackie's death, forces Tony into a confrontation with Junior he was hoping to avoid, while Jackie's funeral – with all the wiseguys in attendance, and all the FBI agents photographing them – is an eye-opening experience for AJ, who's only just been told what his father actually does for a living.

The Tony/Junior tensions that have been simmering for weeks hit a full boil here, though the only gun Tony winds up using is the staple gun he swipes from the hospital to let Mikey Palmice know how much he disapproves of Brendan's murder and Christopher's beating. But for all of Chris' indignant demands for retribution, and the support of his fellow captains in potentially taking out Junior, Tony instead – with some unintentional help from Dr. Melfi – figures out a way to win the peace, by letting Junior think he's the new boss when he's really just a figurehead. It's an elegant solution, for now, and the scene where Tony marches into Junior's favorite lunch place – having taken his uncle's advice to come in “heavy” – and surprises his uncle with the offer to make him leader is as tense as the show has had so far, and a great indicator of what a savvy tactician Tony is. It's not just that he's setting up Junior to take all the heat while he theoretically makes all the decisions, but that he manages to exact a hefty bonus (control of Bloomfield and the paving union) from Junior in the process.

As ways to learn your family's dirty secret go, AJ being spared a schoolyard beating because the bigger kid has been warned by his father not to touch Tony Soprano's kid isn't a bad one. I always appreciate how the writers let AJ be a completely unremarkable kid: inarticulate, clumsy (the two scuffles he has in the hall with Jeremy are among the most realistic underage fights I've seen on TV), and slow on the uptake, even as Meadow is trying very hard to walk him up to the idea that their dad is a prominent mobster. AJ's dawning recognition as he surveys the scene at Jackie's funeral is a strong way to end an episode that's been all about the crumbling walls between Tony's work and home lives.

And then there's the situation with Dr. Melfi. Even before she backs into playing war consiglieri in Tony's dispute with Junior, we see Tony battling three dueling impulses at once. First, he's attracted to his shrink. Second, she's helping him deal with his panic attacks, and with the ongoing emotional turmoil that comes from being Anthony Soprano. Third, if Silvio or Hesh or, worse, Uncle Junior, should find out that he's spilling his guts to an outsider – even someone theoretically bound by doctor-patient confidentiality – he could quickly wind up in the ground with his friend Jackie.

That third impulse is understandably the most powerful, and the one that drives him to sic Vin Makazian on the poor doctor and her boyfriend Randall, wrecking that relationship in the process. This is Tony trying to protect himself, but the secret of his therapy is so powerful that he can't even tell Makazian who Melfi is to him, which inspires his faulty, violent assumption that Tony's mistress is stepping out with another guy. When Melfi tells him – in a surprising instance of her own walls coming down in front of a patient – Tony's frustrated, but more out of Makazian being an idiot (and potentially exposing Tony's involvement in this) than any guilt in what happened to Randall.

In the end, Tony decides to keep the relationship going because Melfi unwittingly makes him realize another benefit of therapy: her knowledge of human behavior, and how to manipulate intractable people like his mother and uncle, can come in very handy as he rises to the top of the unofficial Family tree. That's good for Tony, and for the show, but Melfi might have been better off scaring Tony out of her life forever, no?

Next week, we'll talk about “College” and its impact on the series' overall legacy. But that's structurally an outlier episode. “Meadowlands” is much closer to a typical “Sopranos” episode – if a show at this nascent stage can be said to have a typical episode – and it's fantastic in its own right.

Some other thoughts:

* God, Vin Makazian. One of the show's best-drawn recurring characters, made so immediately vivid by the script and by John Heard's performance as this self-destructive loser who can't quite admit what he's become.

* Tony's near run-in with Silvio is the first time we see more of the Montclair office building where Melfi's practice is located. From what we see of that hallway, and how far the offices are spaced apart, it doesn't seem to match what we know of the layout of Melfi's waiting room and actual office, but maybe the building's irregular on the outside.

* We meet three of the other Family captains: Ray Curto, who tries to duck boss-dom because his son has MS; Larry Boy Barese, who suggests they try running things like a council; and Jimmy Altieri (played by Joseph Badalucco, whose brother Michael won an Emmy in '99 for his role on “The Practice”), who says they need a supreme commander.

* Tony continues his lie of omission to Carmela about Dr. Melfi's gender. You don't have to be a veteran viewer of the show to know this will not end well for him. Also, interesting to note that she's flashing almost as much leg in the scene where she vents to Tony about what Makazian did as she is in the dream that opens the episode. He fantasizes about her, but she's also not dressing Amish for those sessions.

* Loved Tony's crew arguing about how exactly Moe Greene died in “The Godfather,” and how that compares to Brendan's murder. “The Sopranos” only occasionally resembles the classic mob movies, but its characters can quote them chapter and verse.

* Party Like It's 1999: AJ pranks Jeremy be sending an obscene message to his pager, while MegaMob.com is such a sterling example of late '90s web design that it should probably exist on a GeoCities or Angelfire server. (Also, love that Meadow prints out pages from it for AJ to read later. This is a thing we used to do. Bill Simmons alone was likely responsible for the deforestation of many acres with his vintage mailbag columns.)

* We saw in the previous two episodes that finding the humor inside the mob world wasn't always easy to match tonally with the rest of the show. The scene here where an oblivious Tony is gregariously waving an ax at Jeremy's terrified father is a much better example of it, as well as a fine example of what a good comic actor James Gandolfini was.

* For that matter, the one Tony/Livia scene this week (other than her brief cameo in Melfi's clothes in the dream sequence) is a delight, particularly when he notes that he visits her to get cheered up and asks, “You think that's a mistake?” Sadly, this is about the best he can hope for from an encounter with her: a minimum of yelling, and Livia in her incredibly roundabout way asking him to leave a few of the macaroons for her, not that she'd ever admit that this is what she's doing.

* “I'll never forget where I was this day.” God bless the Bing girls, each and every one.

* This week's closing credits song: “Look On Down From the Bridge” by Mazzy Star.

* If you're looking for more of my writing on “The Sopranos,” here are links to my Star-Ledger episode reviews from the later seasons. The show was also the centerpiece of my book, “The Revolution Was Televised.” It's getting an updated edition this fall, dealing primarily with the ends of “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad,” and some of the larger changes to the TV business in the last three years, though there will be some other tweaks. (“The Sopranos” chapter, for instance, will touch on David Chase's recent comments about the show's ending, but the bulk of that one's unchanged, if you're eager to read now.)

And now we come to the spoiler section, where I talk about how events in this episode will have ramifications later in the season or series. If you're new to the show and watching one week at a time, you can safely stop reading now.

* Okay, so Ray Curto? Please remember that he looks like this, and is not to be confused with Patsy Parisi, even though many “Sopranos” fans did, because Ray appeared infrequently and both men had receding hairlines and wore similar glasses. This gets complicated starting in season 3, when we learn that Ray is a cooperating witness for the government.

* Larry Boy will be in and out of jail for the rest of the series (with his kid brother Allie Boy taking his place during his incarcerations), while Jimmy isn't long for this world, as his crew (which handles most Family construction in North Jersey) will be taken over by various Tony irritants (Richie, Ralphie, Vito) in later seasons.

* Tony has discussed dreams in prior episodes, but the nightmare that opens “Meadowlands” would be the first of many visual representations of Tony's unconscious mind. Though the majority of the complaints about the dream sequences – on a show whose very first scene took place in a psychiatrist's office – would come later.

* As I noted last week, Jackie Aprile was a mixed consolation prize for Michael Rispoli not getting the part of Tony. He's only in these three episodes – plus a cameo in the flashbacks of season 3's “To Save Us All From Satan's Power” – so it didn't turn out to be a lucrative, steady job for Rispoli, but at least it's a memorable one. And at the time, Chase had no idea the show would ever exist beyond this first season, so it's not like he was deliberately short-changing the guy. Here's my question: what longer-lasting “Sopranos” role – whether someone introduced this season, or later on – would Rispoli not only have been good at, but arguably better than the person who actually played him? He's a stronger and more versatile actor than Steve Van Zandt, and certainly would have made a fine Silvio, but Van Zandt's weird screen presence is part of what made “The Sopranos” distinct. He's not old enough to play Richie, it's hard to imagine anyone being better than Joey Pants as Ralphie, someone like Eugene wouldn't have given him anything to do before his death episode… is there a good answer for this?

* Tony will continue using Melfi as an unwitting adviser for many years to come. Once she solves the riddle of the panic attacks in season 3, getting her help in dealing with the Ralphies of this world is as much a reason to go as his feelings of attraction towards her.

* Also, while later events this season suggest Tony is largely justified in his fear of what would happen should other wiseguys find out he's in therapy, there's also that great scene coming up where he tells the guys in his crew, and they're largely fine with it. The times, they are a-changing.

Up next: “College,” easily the series' most important episode, and a landmark episode in TV history.

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Sopranos had a long history of great end credit songs and “Look on Down From the Bridge” is one of the earliest and best. Just a great scene with Meadow’s knowing glance at AJ and then Tony winking at him as the song kicks in, really strong, melancholy moment.

By: Sebastian, the First of His Name

06.24.2015 @ 6:39 PM

You beat me to the punch. I always thought that was a particularly sad moment. Perhaps even tragic. The music is borderline elegiac, and I can’t help but think of it as a funeral chant for AJ’s innocence.

Mind you, I’m not saying the reveal ruined his life or anything, but something died away in AJ in that scene.

By: Dana

06.27.2015 @ 5:58 AM

It’s one of the best moments of the entire series.

By: Sebastian, the First of His Name

06.27.2015 @ 3:04 PM

Indeed. I can’t believe it took me so long to appreciate it, though. I didn’t see it until I got into a more analytical state of mind.

By: wittynole

06.24.2015 @ 1:51 PM

I think those AJ scenes are so awful and out of place for The Sopranos. Tony making Junior think he’s the boss was one of the first times we saw how smart and business savvy Tony was.

By: sepinwall

06.24.2015 @ 2:11 PM

We can argue about the quality of the AJ scenes and/or the quality of Robert Iler’s performance (and I’ll readily concede that he’s no Kiernan Shipka or Holly Taylor in the cable drama child actor department), but the show is as much, if not more, about Tony’s family as it is about the mob stuff. Seeing AJ discover his dad is a wiseguy is exactly the kind of story the show should have been telling at this point.

By: JohnR

06.24.2015 @ 2:45 PM

Up until this point AJ seems to be pretty much a normal kid but anyone who’s watched the entire series knows that that changes drastically. So I believe that theses scenes are important to not only the characters development but to the development of the overall arc of the show. The realization of who his dad is, and therefore who he is, will be a big part of his problems from here on out.

Also that picture of him and Tony with the fish will have a part later on during one of Tony and Carmella’s marital problems.

By: quietjim

06.24.2015 @ 3:11 PM

The problem is not that AJ is no Kiernan Shipka the problem is he’s no Jamie-Lynn Sigler. At no point do I ever buy in 100% that this kid could be Tony Sopranos’ however this show is so good that such a major flaw is just nit picking

By: tim73

06.24.2015 @ 3:30 PM

I respectfully disagree, I can totally see that its Tony Soprano’s kid. He’s got Tony’s stubborn streak, ego, and self-destructive tendencies, only without the intelligence to back it up.

By: Jacob

06.25.2015 @ 6:06 PM

You may find AJ annoying but I think he is a fascinating portrayal how kids are not happy and successful like in ‘Cosby Show’ and how a kid turns out when is cuddled by his mother. And what they did with AJ in the final season was mindblowing. No character from The Sopranos had such a character development.

By: Reagan

06.25.2015 @ 9:21 PM

I thought AJ was great. And I don’t have a problem with the acting.

I saw AJ more as a typical person of his generation who has been induced into a coma by the culture. Consumerism and all that.

When the blinders get pulled off of him in the last season, it’s too much for him to bear or make sense of. And just when he’s about to steer into a better place, Tony and Carmella medicate him back into that coma.

By: Brian S

06.26.2015 @ 4:52 PM

First time we watched “The Sopranos” in its entirety, my son’s age ranged from 1 to 9 and I hated AJ.

Second time we watched “The Sopranos” in its entirety, my son was a teenager and I vividly remember thinking, “Holy shit. I get it now,” with regards to AJ. (And Meadow, since I have a teen girl too.)

Cannot begin to tell you how much more I appreciated the family arcs once I had a couple of teenagers. It was like watching an entirely different show for the first time.

By: Dana

06.27.2015 @ 6:15 AM

AJ and Robert Iler got way too much grief over the years in my opinion. I think AJ is so like Tony in so many ways except that he had a loving mother. The central conflict to the series has always been Livia and how her pathology (and Johnny Boy’s) influenced who her children became. Here is Tony’s son, very much like Tony, except absent the intelligence (which I think is as comical as anything else on the show) but raised with a loving mother. We’re always led to believe that Tony turned out as he did because of Livia, that if he truly had a mother’s love, he would have not turned out to be a sociopath. But in many ways, AJ with a mother’s love didn’t turn out any better. It’s powerful stuff, even if it was more of Tony’s performance than AJ’s which brought this out.

By: tim73

06.24.2015 @ 3:24 PM

I vote for Michael Rispoli/Bobby Baccala swap. No offense to Steve Schirripa, but that’s the only other character I could think of that he could’ve done just as well at. Rispoli has those kind eyes, that I don’t think would’ve worked as well for, like say, Johnny Sack.

By: Ben

06.24.2015 @ 3:35 PM

I think Michael Rispoli would have been as good or better in the role of Vito than Joseph R. Gannascoli was. While Gannascoli did a good job as Vito, Rispoli is a much better and more versatile actor than him, and would have been able to highlight the conflicting emotions and untenable ties between his professional and personal existences in a deeper way than Gannascoli could.
Also, to be honest, at least some of the storyline for Vito involved the implicit humor and disgust over a big fat Mafia guy turning out to be gay. Having an average-sized actor like Rispoli hitting some of those story beats would have brought the violent and cruelty and homophobia to a less cartoony place.

By: Protestant Whiskey

06.24.2015 @ 6:24 PM

Exactly who I was going to say. We love the Vito character because he exists in the world of a show we love, but he was so one-note and got more than a little tired (to me). His character, and what he meant to the story, well, it needed a really solid actor with big range. I think Rispoli could have done a better job with the internal conflict of being gay (if that storyline would have even existed) in this ultra-male dominated, homophobic world. At least he would have done better with the line, “I love you, Johnny Cakes.” Watched this series through a half dozen times, and die with laughter every time I hear it.

By: jyocca

06.27.2015 @ 11:18 PM

As Protestant Whiskey said, if Rispoli was cast as Vito, the gay story line would never have happened. The idea of Vito being gay actually came from Joseph Gannascoli himself inspired by a story he read. I happened to think it worked as a chapter in that final season’s overall themes on humanity and personalities and change.

By: Matt

06.24.2015 @ 6:39 PM

Junior telling Tony to come heavy is one of my favorite lines and always makes me wish that they could have had Junior as a more competent foil to Tony. With his arrest, cancer, and ultimate dementia, the show turned Junior from someone that Tony had to treat carefully into a feeble old man

By: Sebastian, the First of His Name

06.24.2015 @ 6:43 PM

I see what you’re saying, but I think there’s only so many times Junior could have been portrayed as Tony’s rival before it got old.

I’ve come to enjoy the dynamics of later seasons, when Tony and Junior were at odds with each other due to past transgressions, but still loved each other in a quasi father/sn relationship.

I do think that they amped up the goofy factor too much with Junior (getting his hand stuck in the drain, the milk and blender incident, the boon mic hitting him on the courthouse steps,)

By: Matt

06.24.2015 @ 6:58 PM

I agree with you Sebastian and I actually am ok with Junior’s story arc at the end of the show. I just think they went too quickly from Junior ordering the hit on Tony in season one to complete liability/comic relief.

By: J. Hobart

06.24.2015 @ 8:14 PM

Also, Junior was around 65 years old childless and moody man. I imagine in a family-first world like this (or any other, for that matter) he couldn’t command respect for much else other than being old school. “He’s living in the wrong century and NY knows it” reminds me of his conference call council in the Ginny Sack Situation.

And a semi-serious question. Do people ever wake up the way Tony did at the beginning of the episode? I don’t think I do and I’ve always find it the most tired of TV tropes.

By: Sebastian, the First of His Name

06.24.2015 @ 8:58 PM

True enough, Matt. I think that’s probably David Chase throwing every story idea in the first season like Alan says it in his book (which I’m not embarrassed to promote, BTW. It’s the last book a long while that I read almost non-stop for nearly 5 hours).

J. Hobart, usually when I wake up from a bad dream, my eyes snap open and I stay in the same position. At most I give a little shudder or a start. Can’t speak for anybody else, though.

By: Paulo Salvador

06.24.2015 @ 8:58 PM

shoutout to bill simmons!

By: Wilbur Gray

06.24.2015 @ 10:52 PM

Always looked forward to seeing George Loro’s Ray character show up on the show,since he played one of Chase’s first vivid mobster creations,Anthony Boy,onThe Rockford Files years earlier.Great character actor.

By: DB Cooper

06.26.2015 @ 6:34 AM

Anthony Boy was the nice-enough guy in the record business episode, right? Loros also played the heavy in the two parter with Joyce Van Patten.

By: Wilbur Gray

06.26.2015 @ 3:01 PM

Anthony Boy was the name of the mob character Loro’s played.It looked like he was dead at the end of the first episode he was in,but he was brought back the season after along with his henchman,Sil.I forgot about the record business story in which he played a friend of Rockford’s,another ex-con if I remember right.

By: JoeM3120

06.25.2015 @ 12:22 AM

This episode is probably the earliest example of the show would become, with more of the focus on the politics and inner workings of the DiMeo Family rather than it being a show based on Tony’s family and the wacky mis-adventures of Tony’s crew. The first few episodes had the term “Mafia Procedural” bouncing in my head.

Also, I’m not quite sure why we ever had to deal with the aspect of Ercole DiMeo being in prison and Jackie and everybody else being “Acting” Boss. We never see Tony or anybody make a trip to prison to visit him or him trying to run the family from prison. Even when Johnny Sack was eventually arrested, he was running the Lupertazzi Family from prison with Phil as Acting Boss. Just seems like such as an odd plot point that was never expanded upon and I’m pretty sure we never heard the name Ercole DiMeo again.

By: sepinwall

06.25.2015 @ 12:22 PM

Yeah, I think it’s one of a bunch of elements in the first season that Chase didn’t really think through when he introduced it. (Hence the shrug and “he died in prison” when I asked him about DiMeo in a later season.) But the idea of the DiMeo Family finally becoming the Soprano Family after Junior, Johnny Boy and Tony have been in it for their whole lives has some power.

By: Reagan

06.25.2015 @ 9:27 PM

About Ercole DiMeo…

There has to be a back story, and this one is as good as any other. As to why it was mentioned in Season 1, history resonantes. Or maybe echoes is a better term. People don’t stop talking about him as head the minute he goes to prison. And there’s a respect factor.

By: Brian

06.25.2015 @ 2:05 AM

Rispoli would have been superb as Johnny Sack. I never loved how Curatola played the angry scenes. Rispoli would have been perfect and they met the sane end but Rispoli would have hung around longer

By: primate

06.25.2015 @ 3:07 AM

Another dose of “I feel old”: Robert Iler (the actor that played AJ) is now 30.

By: the new junior executive

06.25.2015 @ 5:56 AM

They got a lot of business out of those macaroons – not just the “leave some for the crazies.” First there’s Livia briefly looking as if she was going to smile and thank Tony for them, before figuring out how to criticize them, and finally Makazian’s asking without asking “whatcha got in the box” followed by staring through the box when Tony tells him.

By: Stefanie

06.25.2015 @ 7:22 PM

“Come heavy or don’t come at all” is one of my favorite Soprano lines of all time.

Sometimes I wish we knew what made Meadow realize what Family her family was in–what made Meadow lose her innocence and then just accept it. AJ is older than Meadow was, I think. And AJ seems so shocked by it. Given AJ’s behavior the rest of the series, he really struggled with it. Is it because Carmella really coddles him? Is he what Tony would’ve been with a loving mother?

By: Sebastian, the First of His Name

06.26.2015 @ 12:30 AM

Well, remember, Tony was also quite shocked when he discovered his old man was a mobster. I mean, he saw Johnny By chop off a man’s finger, after all. I think AJ’s problem is ultimately lack of ambition, which may be tied with his genetic predisposition for depression. Even when he started something in later seasons (like that event planner phase or college) it always fell by the wayside.

By: DB Cooper

06.26.2015 @ 6:31 AM

George Loros, who played Curto, played three different gangsters on the Rockford Files. One was named “Anthony Boy.” I love watching Chase repeat himself when it’s great stuff.

By: Dana

06.27.2015 @ 5:54 AM

Are you absolutely sure that Jimmy headed up the family’s construction crew? My understanding is that crew was always referred to as “The Aprile Crew,” which was indeed the kiss of death crew for leadership, as Richie, Ralphie and Vito each in turn were whacked while running this crew. How do you know that this is the crew Jimmy was leading? Is it by deduction or did I miss something in my 10+ viewings of season 1?

Also, this leads me to something else what to me is a pretty big inconsistency.

I always presumed that the Aprile crew got it’s name because Jackie was it’s leader at one point. It makes sense then that would be why Richie so easily became leader of a crew after his long stint in the can, since that crew had no natural leader at the time (if we are to believe that this was Jimmy’s crew). It makes sense that the Aprile crew would be Jackie’s based on the back story of Beansie Gaeta who Richie said several times was given his start by Jackie (“or else he would still be selling nickel bags on Jefferson Ave if it wasn’t for Jackie.”

Here comes the disparity.

In the season 3 flashback to the Satriale’s Childrens” Christmas party that featured Michael Rispoli’s reprisal of Jackie, it seemed very much like Jackie was the head of Tony’s crew at the time. Pussy, who missed the meeting with Junior came in and offered his excuses to Jackie, calling him boss (and we know that Jackie wasn’t yet the boss of the DiMeo crime family). So actually from here it seems like Tony inherited his crew from Jackie. So Jackie could never have been head of the Aprile crew. While there is a gap in backstory because we never know exactly when Tony’s dad died so it’s possible that in the wake of Johnny-Boy’s death, Jackie became head of the Soprano crew (although he and Tony are roughly the same age and they got made at the same time, so presumably Tony would have been ready to be a captain). The show has never come right out and said it, but we’ve always been led to believe that Tony inherited his crew from his father (we know for sure that the Soprano crew was Johnny Boy’s since many times it is referred to that Paulie worked for Tony’s dad. Hence, why was it called the Aprile crew if Jimmy was the boss at season’s start? Maybe Jimmy is an Aprile (the family is large as lots of people, including Adriana are Aprile cousins) but I don’t think that was ever established.

By: sepinwall

06.28.2015 @ 2:34 AM

I don’t recall if there’s a specific mention in season 2 to Richie’s crew having been Jimmy’s, but it definitely comes up later on when Vito is giving Tony a headache and someone notes the long and problematic history of that specific crew, dating back to Jimmy’s leadership of it.

By: Dana

06.27.2015 @ 6:07 AM

I would have liked to see Rispoli play Johnny Sack. It’s such a pivotal role in the series that requires a lot of range (the tenderness with Ginny with the toughness and cunning necessary to work under and undermine Carmine is a great range). I never quite liked how Vince Curatola played Johnny’s rage, it always felt a little tinny and really wrecked the character for me.

By: jyocca

06.27.2015 @ 11:28 PM

At first my thought was Big Pussy. While I have no complaints with Vincent Pastore’s performance, I think Rispoli could have added a bit more depth to the character, especially when he turns informant. That scene with AJ at his confirmation, I have never found myself crying for Puss. I have a feeling Rispoli would have nailed that scene. And he could have played the bumbling gangster bodyshop owner pretty much to a tee.

But now that I read the reviews, I agree with the others stated here. He would have made a better Johnny Sack. The parallels would have been similar and Rispoli had the acting chops to handle those scenes with Ginny, and at his daughter’s wedding, with a bit more sympathy than Curatola portrayed, breaking down as he’s being arrested.

Either way, it is a shame he was underused, but the chemistry the cast had made the show what it was and usually things pan out for reason. I certainly couldn’t imagine him as Tony. It’s a totally different show.

By: Reagan

07.18.2015 @ 8:34 PM

Rewatched the episode, and I don’t remember hearing this line before (from Hunter to Chris):

Hunter: “Did Brenden get my poem?”

Just hilarious.

By: Hilary

08.01.2015 @ 12:16 AM

I read that Vincent D’Onofrio was offered the part of Tony but declined.

By: Ryan

08.18.2015 @ 9:29 AM

mike rispoli would have been a better tony blundetto than Steve buscemi, Steve plays a gangster very good don’t get me wrong, he just didn’t quite fit in as a Italian mobster imho